"The dreadful spout,
Which shipmen do the hurricane call,
Constring'd in mass by the almighty sun."
SHAKESPEARE (Troilus and Cressida.)
Their tumbling upon the roofs of several houses at a period of the day when anything unusual would have been noticed, favors the view that a hurricane did not drive them from their natural place of abode. The distance of the valley of Aberdare from the sea, southwards, is about twenty miles.
That isolated showers of fish have happened in various localities, the result of atmospheric disturbances, the evidence furnished is too clear to admit a doubt of. When once elevated, from whatever cause, the propelling force and velocity of the wind would prove sufficient to carry them a considerable distance say many miles before the laws of gravitation would begin to exert themselves. Showers of fish are not more extraordinary than the ejection of fish from volcanoes, a circumstance which has occurred near Quito, where liquid mud ejected by the volcanoes often involves myriads of small dead fish. Pimelodes Cyclopum. (Cyc. Brit ed. 8, vol. 3, p. 129.)
SHOWERS OF LIZARDS.
The great abundance of fish compared with the scarcity of lizards necessarily invests a shower of the latter with considerable interest, and the instance here given is the only one that has come under my notice. A newspaper extract from the Montreal Weekly Gazette of 28th December, 1857, furnished the following:
"SHOWER OF LIZARDS. The Leroy (N.Y.) Gazette says that, during the heavy rain of Sunday night last, live lizards, some of them measuring four inches in length, fell from the clouds like manna, though not as plentiful, nor half so welcome. They were found crawling on the sidewalks and in the streets, like infantile fugitive alligators in places far removed from localities where they inhabit."
If this account is reliable, then the lizard here mentioned must be the yellow bellied water newt, which exists in abundance in some of the waters and streams of the North American rivers, especially in the State of New York, Canada, and neighbouring places. I have caught these lizards with greater ease and in larger numbers than fish in particular localities, and providing that they have existed in number sufficient, the only possible mode of explanation of a shower of them, is that by which the fish, already referred to, were taken up into the clouds, namely, by means of a land waterspout, or possibly carried onwards by a hurricane. In North America tornadoes and whirlwinds are by no means uncommon, and occur at various intervals of time. Those who object to this theory must be prepared with a better one, to account for the presence of lizards on the sidewalks and streets of a small town. They are not animals that leave the water and crawl over land like small frogs. Their presence on the roofs of the houses would not have strengthened the argument for or against their being due to a shower. A reference to the map of the State of New York shows Leroy to be twenty-three miles south of Lake Ontario, or twenty south-west of the City of Rochester. It lays at the foot of a hill, and in front runs a stream, and another a few miles to the north, both of them tributaries of the Genessee River, twelve miles to the east. Some one of these waters was, doubtless, the source whence the lizards were transferred to the spot already mentioned, through the agency of a waterspout.
SHOWERS OF SOOT, SAND, AND ASHES.
I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds banner unfurl.
Shelley.
As these substances are chiefly the product of volcanic eruptions, they shall be considered together. The heavy scoriae that are ejected in small fragments from any volcano, do not become propelled to any great distance, unless from constant attrition they become reduced to the form of ashes or fine sand. Under these circumstances currents of air will transport them to considerable distances, amounting sometimes to hundreds of miles, although apparently opposed by the direct course of the wind. According to their degree of consistence and fineness, the ejecta of volcanoes receive various names from the Italian geologists: thus, lapillo signifies a fine fragmentary gravel or rounded scoriae, of a deep black colour; if the attrition is carried still further it constitutes the red puzzolana, resembling burnt brick dust; and if finally converted into a condition of fine dust, of a whitish grey, it forms ceneri or ashes (Scrope). Although this division holds good, not unfrequently the three varieties are intermixed, but sometimes include fragments of other rocks which have been produced by former eruptions.
An unusual circumstance is a shower of black dust or ashes, so fine as to resemble soot. This occurred at Montreal in Canada, on two successive days in 1819, and attracted much attention in Europe. On November 8th, dense black clouds let fall a heavy shower of rain, depositing a substance, which, to the eye, the taste, and the smell, presented the appearance of common soot. Next day, at noon, the darkness was extreme, from clouds described as almost pitchy black; this was followed in three hours by thunder, lightning, and rain, and a shock of an earthquake. The rain deposited larger quantities of soot than on the previous day, and as it flowed through the streets it carried on its surface a dense foam resembling soap suds. The range of this phenomenon extended to below Quebec, above Kingston, and in many parts of the United States. The source of the soot was never accurately traced, but in all probability it was from some far distant volcano. This is by no means surprising when we recollect that the volcanic dust, reduced to an impalpable powder, that was ejected in the frightful volcanic eruption in Sumbawa, in 1815 (200 miles from the eastern extremity of Java), was carried through the upper regions of the atmosphere to the islands of Amboyna and Banda, the last 800 miles east of the volcano. The darkness occasioned in the day time by the ashes, in Java, was so profound that it equalled the darkest night known (Lyell). A great fall of black dust fell near Constantinople, in 472, during which the heavens seemed to burn. A black dust like lampblack fell in Shetland, in October, 1755, which smelt strongly of sulphur, covered the faces and hands and blackened the linen of the people in the fields. As the wind was S.W. it was presumed to be from Hecla, 500 and 600 miles further north (Phil. Tran.) This I think is undoubtedly true.
A shower of red dust is mentioned by Theophrastus as occurring at Constantinople in 652; and Quatremere refers to a fall of red sand from a red sky at Bagdad in 929. Kaswini describes red dust and matter like coagulated blood that fell from the heavens in the middle of the ninth century. An account is given by Valisnieri of red dust that fell in 1689, at Venice and other places. At the end of September, 1815, the South Sea was covered to a great extent with dust, supposed to have proceeded from the fall of a meteor (Phil. Mag.) but which I believe to have originated from a neighbouring volcano.
From the repeated projection upwards of fragments of stones and lapilli, and their fall back again into craters, they undergo such an amount of trituration as to be reduced to a condition of sand and fine ashes, which finally are carried upwards, and form clouds which extend to great distances, according to the currents of wind then prevailing. In the eighth century darkness prevailed in the volcanic mountains of Armenia, during forty days, from immense clouds of volcanic ashes. Great as these showers must have been, they are slight in comparison with those of the volcano of Guayta-Putina, near Arequipa in Peru, in February, 1600, which for twenty continuous days vomited such a quantity of stones, sand, and ashes, that the showers covered the surrounding country to a distance of ninety miles on one side, and 120 on the other. The great eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79, buried Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, with its showers of ashes and other ejecta. In 472, according to Procopius, an eruption of Vesuvius occurred, which covered all Europe with ashes. In 1812 ashes fell from a great height in the atmosphere upon Barbadoes, in great profusion, which had been projected from the volcano in the island of St. Vincent. In January, 1835, the volcano of Cosequina, one of the Andes, was in eruption, and some of its ashes fell at Truxillo, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The same shower of ashes fell at Kingston, Jamaica, having been carried by an upper counter current against the regular east wind, which was then blowing (Lyell). Kingston is 700 miles from Cosequina, and these ashes must have been more than four days in the air, having travelled 170 miles a day. Captain Badeley describes a rain of sand or ashes (Phil. Tran.) that began at ten p.m. on December 6th, 1631, when his ship was at anchor in the Gulf of Volo, and continued until two a.m. of next day; forming a layer two inches thick on the deck. A great shower of ashes occurred in the river St. Lawrence, July 3rd, 1814 (Phil. Mag.)
Instances of showers of dust, sand, and ashes, could be multiplied, but the foregoing are sufficient to illustrate the subject. As relating to volcanic phenomena, may be mentioned a cretaceous grey rain, occurring near Mount Etna in 1781. A shower of mud, mingled with rain, fell heavily at three p.m. for upwards of twenty minutes, in the Straits of Messina, on March 23rd, 1869; the sky was very black, and the decks of the P. & O. Co. Steamer resembled something like the London Streets after a sharp rain (Scientific Opinion, April 7th, 1869, p. 439). This was clearly a mixture of sand and ashes with rain, forming the mud.
SHOWERS OF SAND, NON-VOLCANIC.
Whilst examples have been given of showers of sand and ashes that owe their origin to volcanoes, a few words are necessary upon those of the first arising from deserts and arid sandy plains. Every one must be familiar with the account of the pillars of sand in the African deserts, and of the violent whirlwinds which prevail. When these last rage with irresistible force, accompanied by violent gusts of wind, they bear upwards immense bodies of sand, which in time subside, the heavier particles doing so completely, whilst the lighter form a sort of vapour, elevated a certain distance above the level of the sand waves. The following verse from Darwin expresses more than any description could give:
SANDS OF THE DESERT.
Now o'er their head the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,
And the live desert pants and heaves beneath;
Tinged by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies;
In red arcades the billowy plain surround,
And striking turrets dance upon the ground.
Veritable showers of the sands of these African deserts have rained upon the arable land of Egypt, on the western bank of the Nile, being blown by west winds through the valleys opening into the plain or gorges through the Libyan mountains. Many ruins of ancient cities in Egypt have been buried by sand drifts. Towns and villages have been entombed in England, France, and Jutland, by blown sand. In Northern Mexico, Froebel discovered on one occasion, the smoke of five fires in the distance, which proved to be columns of dust caused by whirlwinds. He describes the shifting sand of the Mexican desert of the Medanos, between limestone hills, bounded like a lake, but with a surface in waves like those of the ocean. The north of China is subject to singular showers of sand, which were first described by Dr. Macgowan.